Something spoiled me rotten during my years of WoW. I memorized a lot, but beyond that, I learned how to find information. With such a large and long-running community, WoW has exceptionally good resources for learning about the game. Wowhead would have all the dungeon loot tables, quest chains, you name it. Everything was in there and I got good at finding it. Comments would add tangential, but useful, details. If I wasn't sure of a bit of lore, wowwiki and now wowpedia could help me out. Worst case scenario I could google for some class and crafting guides.

I miss that.

Of course there is something great about the early dungeon runs when all the rewards are a surprise. Then you start to get the hang of it and you've run the places a dozen times. The surprise isn't there anymore. You've moved onto another stage of the game and another stage of fun. Now it's useful to know where things are so you can pursue them. I've grabbed what I could from the random draw, now I'm after something specific. What dungeon or raid? What faction? Is it BoE and readily, if obnoxiously expensively available of the auction house?

Sometimes I think I had more find finding out how to find items than actually finding them. The former has a better payoff too. I'll ditch the item and have no more use for it. The information, that I can keep forever, and maybe use again for another character, or another player. I like showing off what I know, not so much for gear.

In GW2 I'm back in square one. I don't know much and I don't even know how to know much of it. The community is smaller and much newer, so inevitable the resources aren't going to be as plentiful. As a result I do a lot more stumbling around. I don't mind doing things in a less-efficient manner. What I do mind is that I may not know if I'm even getting anywhere. Can I get to that zone from here, or am I running into a strong current? Is that a jumping puzzle or will I hit an invisible wall?

I used to take short peeks at the Legendary requirements on the GW2 wiki, and giggle insanely, because insane is the frame of mind I'd need to get to, to seriously have a stab at it. And then I went insane.

Luckily, ascended weapons have come along, and while no less achievable, it's still taking a lot longer than I thought. I'm just no good at making money in GW2.

Of course, you could just forget about legendaries, and ascended weapons, pick up karma PVT exotics, and jump into WvW. It's taken me a little while to find the right class for me, so I'm only up to Rank 28 on the class that's going to take me to the end of my days. Meanwhile, others are up to 150, and even 400+ ranks.

All in all, I wouldn't worry about it for the first year of play. Check out that world map, and imagine each one of those larger outside areas is an expansion. Now imagine it's going to be at least another year before we get access to any of those. GW2 is going to be around for a while, and so might you be. So smell the roses.